Rockets Cycling 🚀

Hello Rocketeers! 👋

Welcome to the first newsletter where you will see our 2026 team together.

In November, nearly every team comes together with their new riders for the first time, but because most contracts officially run until the end of the year, it becomes difficult or even impossible to film or photograph riders without creating issues. So if it all feels a bit mysterious, even in this newsletter, trust us… there is a reason behind it.

This week, we’ve got:

👋🏻 The 2026 team kick-off
🍻 Rider stories from the team night out
🎥 Behind the scenes of making the Victor Lafay announcement
🇧🇪 Friday Sold Out: secure your ‘Fast Pass’ before it’s too late!

✍️ Bas’ Notebook

Bas Tietema is one of the founders of the Rockets. Bas claims to be the one who actually knows something about cycling, so Devin and Josse gave him this notebook to share updates on what’s been going on with the team lately!

Hello everyone!

We’ve had another busy week in the world of the Rockets. I’m going to give you all my perspective on the kick-off week that we just had, but I can’t take the credit for planning it… 🧩

👏 Our operations team, together with the sporting staff, pieced together the entire puzzle of incoming flights, car rides and train connections. They are the ones who made it all run smoothly!

⚽️ What is kick-off week?

No, it’s not the Rockets organization getting together for a five-a-side football tournament, although that would be fun! We had riders flying in from across the world to our service course near Utrecht.

We discussed that I should give a speech about our background. At the beginning, everyone was aware of how we started as a YouTube channel, but now, as we grow and develop, we get further away from those good old days. I wanted to remind everyone why we’re doing all of this.

🗣️ And I wanted to do it well, and English isn’t my native language, so it took a lot of practice!

We don’t really do too much racing and performance things in the kick-off days. It’s more about getting to know everyone.

Tuesday was more or less about fitting and sizing. For the whole team, it’s new bikes with our move to Rose Bikes. But, most of all, it was about getting to know each other.

I learned that a lot of the riders went out into town, and some of them got back to the hotel pretty late. That is such a good sign for me. This is the time of year when riders can loosen things up a little and enjoy themselves, and having a few drinks is simply part of that.

The more relaxed you are together and the more you forget about the formal setting, the easier it becomes to really get to know each other. And if you read the stories from two of our riders later in this newsletter, do not be shocked.

Even for top athletes, moments like these are normal and can even do some good from time to time.

I also heard that a quiz was made where new riders teamed up, and all of the questions were about last year’s squad. Obviously, they lost the quiz and had to perform afterwards. And about that performance… let’s just say we will not write anything down to protect the riders involved, because it was embarrassingly bad, uhh very good! 🤣🎶

I did not go out. A few years ago, when I was a rider, I would do, but my role has changed. I think it’s a good transition that these things are happening when we aren’t there.

🇩🇪 On Wednesday, we drove to see Rose Bikes.

The next day, we loaded up into the team bus like we were heading for a day at school. Normally, we are complaining that our bus doesn’t have a shower or enough space, but this time it was perfect. We had around 35 people on there.

It was super nice to be hosted at the Rose offices. With them coming on as a new partner of the team, it was good for the riders to see the whole performance chain and get a tour around their headquarters.

They put a lot of effort into making us feel welcome and a part of the family. When you’re a rider, you don’t always see how much effort is put into the products or how big the production is.

👨🏻‍🍳 From Rose, we drove back to our team headquarters and had a BBQ.

It’s so impressive for me to see. Cycling is a traveling circus all over the world. You have teams everywhere, people working and doing their best for this project. It’s mostly not centralised though, and there are rare moments where everyone is in one place at the same time.

😮 It gives a nice insight into how big, and how fast everything has grown.

There were 70, maybe 80 people there. These are the moments where I can really speak to the vision and the ideas. To explain to people how we believe that the story will generate more fans, which will generate more partners and race invites. It’s a circle fueling itself.

Riders in general are pretty focused on performance, but these moments that are not cycling, or race related, you can really zoom out and give them an insight into how we built this team, how we got this far, and our approach.

– Bas

🚴🏼‍♂️ Rider Corner

The inside jokes, the hard training, the race-week nerves, and sometimes the late nights. This is where the riders tell you what’s really going on behind the scenes. If it sounds unfiltered, that’s because it is.

🇨🇿 Tomáš Kopecký (25)has been with the team since day one. His brother, Matyáš, has also signed for the Rockets.

The first day was super casual, everyone getting to know each other around the fitting sessions. It was nice and chill with the first connections to all the new guys. The rumours already started back in the hotel that we might go out. 😏 The only problem was that we had to wake up early to go to Rose…

We started drinking in the hotel, and quickly the whole team was in full force. We took a few taxis to the city centre, and we got split up, before everyone came back together in one bar, where the guy behind the bar recognised the team too.

We tried to get into a dance club, but it was a student evening, so all of us stupid cyclists couldn’t get in. After that, it was a big walk to the same cafe we went to last year. There was so much drinking, too much drinking. It’s hard to tell any stories because I was in a dark place! It was a mess, I won’t tell you everything here… 🤢

⏰ I had less than three hours of sleep, and I still felt bad on the way to Rose. It was a great day there. We learned who they are and where they’re going. I was so impressed by everything they’re doing and the good vibes there. They also told us all that we would get a gravel bike too, which I was so, SO happy with, but a little too hungover to celebrate loudly. 🫣

Finishing with the BBQ was cool. The atmosphere in the team is special. After the BBQ, we all went back (and slept a lot). I don’t think anybody made it to 10pm.

🇮🇪 Rory Townsend (30) is the Irish National Champion and one of our new additions to the 2026 team.

It was a really good get-together with the boys. Obviously, it’s always quite exciting going into a new team, but this felt a lot different to anything I’ve done before. It’s quite a young team, and I suppose I’m considered one of the guys with more experience.

It just felt like a lot of fun. It was really refreshing. We had a few activities, bits and bobs. The quiz on the first night was quite clearly rigged against the new guys on the team. 🤣 We all just happened to be on the losing team and had to do a forfeit on the last night.

There was a big night out, of course. There’s no better team bonding than going for a couple of drinks together. There were a few havy heads on the way to the Rose factory… 🫠

Seeing their passion and how they want to support the project is amazing. It was interesting to see the parallels between the two coming together.

I really, really enjoyed the time with the guys, and looking forward to getting to know everyone even more. Yeah, it was just so refreshing to be a part of.

🎨 From Devin’s Creative Lab

Devin van der Wiel is the one behind the ideas, the visuals, the vibes. As the director of our videos, Devin gives the team its voice, and its style. If it feels like the Rockets, it probably came from this Lab.

Hi Rocketeers,

With all the new rider announcements and planning new designs for next year, I’ve been hiding in my creative lab the last couple of weeks.

🤯 The Victor Lafay announcement was quite something.

Bas called me the week before, saying that Victor Lafay wanted to meet him. He didn’t really know what to expect, but my mind immediately started spinning: how can we tell this story in the best possible way?

I already knew a bit of the background; Victor had been doubting whether to continue cycling, and Bas had even visited him in France before. I’d asked Bas to vlog/film that trip, so I went back to those clips and also asked Julia for some context about the earlier conversations with Lafay.

😕 That’s when I found the voice memo from Victor’s manager saying Victor was planning to quit.

The emotion in that recording felt so real, it instantly became the heart of both the social media announcement and the YouTube video. And no, it wasn’t AI – it’s the real deal.

From there, I thought: the outcome is uncertain, but that’s what makes it exciting.

So we decided to film the 24 hours from the moment we picked Victor up at Schiphol Airport until the deal was finalized. Bas asked Victor if he was okay with us filming everything, and he was super open to it, which is obviously crucial. Of course, I couldn’t film every single moment (like the dinner 🍽️), but together with his sit-down interview, I think we managed to capture the full emotional story of those 24 hours.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked closely with our videographer, Mark and media manager, Mitchell to create a full media push: a social video, an 18-minute YouTube documentary, and a written behind-the-scenes story for the newsletter.

It was really satisfying to see the impact: the news itself already generated buzz, but combining it with our storytelling power made the moment explode. It pulled fans straight into Victor’s story from day one. Of course, it helps that Victor is such a great character, especially with his “how to make a croque monsieur” moment 😄

This week really shows what makes what we do so exciting: there’s no wall between the sporting and media sides of the team. That’s what allows us to tell these kinds of stories in a way that’s pretty unique in the sports world.

– Devin

💰 Josse’s Hustle Report

Now it’s Josse’s turn. Of the three of us, he’s the one chasing sponsorships, commercial deals, and this time…

…a final reminder that our End of Season Sale is happening next week at the Tour of Flanders Centre, in Oudenaarde, Belgium 🇧🇪.

⚠️ Note: Friday Fast Pass is SOLD OUT. You can still turn up, but the Fast Pass – and with that a guaranteed entrances – is fully booked!

🗓️ November 21-23

What do you need to know?

💲 Deals on team bikes and kit.
❓ Rider meet and greets.
🤫 2026 sneak peaks.
🤔 Hourly lottery.

⏰ Don’t want to wait in line and want to guarantee your access?

We’re expecting a large crowd and a long line at the entrance on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so we’ve created a Fast Pass system that guarantees your entry. We have only a few spots left.

✍🏻 Sign Up Here ✍🏻

– Josse

😅 We planned bi-weekly… and then things got busy!

Our plan has always been to send the Rockets newsletter every two weeks at the end of the week. That sounded nice and organized. But the past few weeks have been so full of news, signings, stories and behind the scenes moments that we kept hitting that send button every single week.

We hope you enjoyed the extra updates, but do not get too used to it. We love keeping you in the loop, although even we have a limit to how often we can sit still long enough to write a newsletter! 🤯

Cheers! Proost! Santé!

– Bas, Devin & Josse 💜